Missiles thrown by unseen agency.
The Revue Spirite of this month quotes from the Union Liberale de Tours and the Journal d’Indre-et-Loire some facts which have caused excitement in their locality. At a farm situate in an open part not far from Tours, with nothing around to afford concealment, for some time past showers of stones have been thrown against the house, before daylight. The stones are similar to those in the brooks of the locality; they fall think and fast from all quarters against the walls and doors, leaving deep indentures.
Watchers and police have been planted about the place night after night against the attack expected at dawn; stones strike them even in corners where they supposed themselves securely hidden. One watcher on the roof was struck. When the full fall of stones began there were more than a hundred on the watch. Stones whistled about their ears but no throwers could be seen. The guard of the powder-magazine in the neighbourhood reinforced the gendarmes of the district in establishing a military cordon about the place; still there were the stones thrown, but the throwers were nowhere.
Sceptics, as usual, came forward to explain everything; they seemed to think that they had but to put in their appearance for things to fall at once into their normal state with good account given. But the thing went on. One hard-headed gentleman, heaving the stones rattling about his ears, took to his heels, he receiving in his flight one, well cast, accurately on the lowest part of his back. The shepherd boy who slept on the premises made an outcry one night, saying he had been pinched at the throat: a bruise was there as from fingers .This was the only approach to injury done; to frighten rather than hurt seemed the object of the invisibles.
The inmates of the Fontaine farm, in the neighbourhood, are also disturbed by noises as of a heavily laden waggon jolting over the rough road, cracking of a driver’s whip, and horses’ feet clamping among the stones, the walls vibrating at the same time as if a heavily laden waggon were passing, while there is nothing. Other sounds are heard at times, such as dance tunes from a violin, with peasant foot stamping in time. Again there will be sounds as of heavy things being thrown into the well, and of the water splashing. The neighbours have helped the farmer’s people to find out the secret of these disturbances but without success.
At this farm lodges a M. Bonnin, recently appointed registrar of the district. He has come from Vendee, and says that he used to hear similar noises there. M. Leon Denis, who forwards these accounts, asks, “Is Bonnin a medium, and the unknowing source of the phenomena?” M. Denis says that similar facts are reported from Rochecarbon.
Light, 13th May 1882.